Research Alert
Finding Materials to Teach the Common Core Standards
How are teachers finding materials to implement the Common Core English language arts and mathematics standards? A 2015 survey of more than 2,000 teachers in states that have adopted the Common Core standards suggests that although the great majority of teachers are using some materials provided by their districts to align with the standards, almost all of them are also developing or selecting their own instructional materials.
In mathematics, 97 percent of elementary teachers and 98 percent of secondary teachers said they used some materials they selected and/or developed themselves. In English language arts, 99 percent of elementary teachers and 96 percent of secondary teachers said they used materials they selected and/or developed themselves.
Most of these teachers said they used their self-developed or self-selected materials frequently (at least once a week)—in mathematics, 82 percent of elementary teachers and 91 percent of secondary teachers; and in English language arts, 89 percent of elementary teachers and 85 percent of secondary teachers.
Read the RAND report—Implementation of K–12 State Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts and Literacy: Findings from the American Teacher Panel.
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A Guide to Open Educational Resources
If you're looking for a starting point to explore Open Educational Resources (OER), begin at Edutopia's OER Resource Roundup. The site features a video overview, tips for locating OER, and rubrics for evaluating their quality. The roundup also includes a comprehensive list of websites with openly licensed content plus related articles for extended reading. For more about OER and how your district can "go open," see Andrew Marcinek's article in this issue.
Relevant Read
The Power of Questioning: Opening Up the World of Student Inquiry
by Starr Sackstein (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)
Many educators would agree that having students follow their curiosity and take charge of their own learning is the Holy Grail of teaching. How can teachers set up classroom conditions and plan for interactions that lead students to approach learning as a delightful inquiry? Starr Sackstein's The Power of Questioning is packed with ideas about planning instruction that encourages inquiry and instills within students a lifelong desire to learn.
A lot of it comes down to making students' questions the centerpiece of classroom work—even if that means setting aside class time to help students identify what they want to learn and to then develop their own rewarding questions. Sackstein explains in detail how to teach students about questioning. Teachers can help students explore what makes a rich question, dissect and get a handle on the poor questions they'll likely face on many standardized tests, and apply their questioning skills to course content. With examples from her own teaching and that of others, she shows how even slight shifts in approach (for instance, beginning a teacher-student learning conference with the student's thoughts on an upcoming learning goal) can fuel an attitude of inquiry.
Screen Grabs
Putting Thinking in Students' Hands
Ideally, lesson design isn't so much about delivering content as it's about getting students to become autonomous thinkers, says English language arts teacher Sarah Brown Wessling in a Teaching Channel video, "Instructional Model: Gradual Release of Responsibility." In the video, Wessling leads her high school students through the in-depth exploration of a literary work, slowly but surely shifting the cognitive load to learners through four steps:
- The focus lesson ("I do it")
- Guided instruction ("We do it")
- Collaborative group work ("You do it together")
- Independent work ("You do it alone")
Numbers of Note
Where do teachers find lesson plans?
91% report finding or sharing lesson plans on social networking sites or educational sites.
76% say that they share resources and lesson plans when they spend time collaborating with colleagues.
What websites do teachers use most often for lesson planning help?
YouTube.com: 64%
Discovery.com: 50%
Scholastic.com: 47%
PBS.org: 46%
Pinterest.com: 41%
Source: Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Primary Sources: America's Teachers on Teaching in an Era of Change (3rd edition).
Page Turner
"The simplest strategy for designing open questions that will promote deep thinking is to ask 'Why?' as often as you can."
